There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
The true epic of our times is not "Arm's and the Man," but "Tools and the Man"--an infinitely wider kind of epic. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
A dandy is a clothes-wearing man--a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Our very walking is an incessant falling; a falling and a catching of ourselves before we come actually to the pavement. It… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Man's Unhappiness... comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, with which all his cunning he cannot… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere accident. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Friend, hast thou considered the "rugged, all-nourishing earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the housetop, much… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest? — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men cannot hold… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
It is not to taste sweet things; but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no longer exists. It is in reality no longer expected or recognized as… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance.… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
In no time whatever can small critics entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain altogether peculiar collar reverence for Great… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create,… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Be a pattern to others, and then all will go well; for as a whole city is affected by the licentious passions and vices… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
The glory of a workman, still more of a master workman, that he does his work well, ought to be his most precious possession;… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them. — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
Let Time and Chance combine, combine! Let Time and Chance combine! The fairest love from heaven above, That love of yours was mine, My… — Thomas Carlyle Copy Share Image
